Cold War blocs: what they were and their characteristics

We explain what the Cold War blocs were, their origin and history, as well as their characteristics and alliances.

During the Cold War, the two rival powers did not engage in direct military confrontation.

What were the Cold War blocs?

The Cold War blocs were Two alignments of countries that defined international relations in the second half of the 20th century. Each bloc was headed by a world power with its own economic, political and ideological characteristics:

• the western or capitalist bloc (under the hegemony of the United States)
• the eastern or communist bloc (under the hegemony of the Soviet Union)

The two blocks were formed after the Second World War, when The Allies, who had defeated the Nazis, agreed to share the government of Germany.. Disagreements between the United States, the United Kingdom and France—which dominated the western sector—and the Soviet Union (USSR)—which dominated the eastern sector—led to the division of Germany and the rest of Europe between the western capitalist nations and the eastern communist countries.

During the Cold War, The two rival powers did not engage in direct military confrontation.but they competed for supremacy in the political, ideological, diplomatic, economic, cultural, armament and scientific fields. In any case, They directly or indirectly supported military episodes in various parts of the world (such as Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East). The Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

See also: Bipolar world

The historical context

After the Second World War, two blocks of opposing countries were formed.

The Allied victory in World War II (1939-1945) was largely due to the intervention of the United States and the Soviet Union. The leaders of both powers met before the end of the war at the Yalta Conference (1945), together with the British Prime Minister, to agree on the terms of Germany’s surrender and define its areas of influence in Europe.

After the war in Europe was over, another conference was held in Potsdam and Germany was divided into four occupation areas, shared between the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. Berlin was also divided into four sectors, and the Allied Control Council was established there to jointly govern Germany, but differences between the Western nations and the Soviet government caused the council to cease functioning.

The British and American occupation areas were economically unified in 1947, and the Soviet Union, which controlled eastern Germany, blockaded Berlin between 1948 and 1949, preventing the western sector of the city from receiving supplies. The blockade was lifted in 1949, but The opposition between the capitalist West and the communist East was consolidated with the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (or West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (or East Germany). Also with the founding of NATO (military alliance of the capitalist bloc) and the installation of governments under Soviet control in Eastern Europe (communist bloc).

The dividing line between both blocks It was named the “Iron Curtain”and alignment with one or the other bloc spread to other parts of the world and characterized the Cold War until the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991). A number of leaders of decolonized countries (such as Indonesia, India and Egypt) promoted a movement of non-aligned countries, with the aim of maintaining neutrality in the confrontation between the two blocs.

The Western Bloc

Transatlantic ties

NATO emerged as a military alliance within the Western bloc.

The Western Bloc during the Cold War It was made up of countries with a capitalist economywith democratic political systems. The lifting of barriers to world trade, sponsored and managed by international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), fostered trade and monetary exchanges, which prevented isolationist tendencies (i.e., the preference for economic isolation or the rejection of international alliances).

One of the reasons that led the United States to promote the constitution of a bloc built around alliances, despite the fact that this was contrary to its historical traditions, was to strengthen Western Europe, which had been weakened by the Second World War and it was necessary to avoid losing the Cold War.

The Truman Doctrine (which provided military and economic support to populations facing communist advance) and, above all, the Marshall Plan (a program of economic aid to Western European countries) were the first two steps in the new American stance. The reconstruction of European economies and the achievement of a certain social stability were key elements of the “containment” of communism in Western Europe.

He European Recovery Program, The plan, better known as the Marshall Plan, led the United States to propose the need for European economic coordination. Thus, in 1948, the Organisation for European Economic Coordination (OEEC) was born, the embryo of the future Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The conclusion of this process of forming the Western bloc took place in 1949 with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty and the establishment, the following year, of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)the great Western military alliance.

See also: National Security Doctrine

The beginnings of “European construction”

The United States played a key role in the post-war period, pushing Western European countries towards building European unity. The “European idea” (i.e., the notion of a European identity and the promotion of a unity of the countries of Western Europe) was not new. During the interwar period, figures such as the politician Coudenhove-Kalergi and the statesman Aristide Briand defended an integration project that failed after the depression of 1929 and the rise of fascism.

After World War II, Various initiatives paved the way for integration:

• In May 1948, more than 750 European figures, including important political leaders, met at the Hague Congress, and in 1949 the Council of Europe was born.
• In 1950 and 1951, when the first “hot” (i.e. armed) conflict of the Cold War began in Korea, the main steps in the integration process were taken: the Schuman Declaration and its immediate consequence, the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).
• Western Europe had begun a unitary path in which Economic integration played an essential roleThe signing of the Treaties of Rome in 1957 and the birth of the European Economic Community (EEC) were the next decisive steps, until the creation of the European Union in 1993.

You may find this useful: Origins of the Cold War

A global network of alliances

The historical experience of the interwar period and the Cold War led the United States to take a historic turn in its traditional isolationism. Beyond the transatlantic ties with Western Europe, the US State Department launched into the construction of a series of international alliances. with the aim of consolidating the Western bloc and stopping the advance of communism:

• OAS. During the time of President Harry S. Truman, the Rio Treaty was signed in 1947 with twenty Latin American countries. This initiative was consolidated in 1948 with the founding of the Organization of American States (OAS). This institution has always been based on an imbalance of power between the United States and the rest of the countries of the continent. However, the existence of the OAS could not prevent the alignment of the Cuban government (which emerged after the 1959 revolution) with the Soviet Union, nor the emergence of Marxist-inspired movements that led guerrilla wars in several Latin American countries during the 1960s and 1970s.
• ANZUS and the Treaty of San FranciscoThe Korean War (1950-1953) led in 1951 to the establishment of a military alliance in the Pacific: the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States), and the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco with Japan, a former enemy of the United States, with which it signed a peace treaty. In any case, the intention to stop communist influence in the Pacific motivated the American intervention in the Vietnam War (1964-1975) in support of South Vietnam, in which North Vietnam emerged victorious (with the support of the Soviet Union and communist China).
• SEATOPresident Dwight Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, completed and systematized the network of Western alliances: in 1954, SEATO (the acronym for the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) was born, with Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan.
• CENTOIn 1955, the Baghdad Pact was signed, a security alliance in the Middle East between Great Britain, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan and Iran. When Iraq withdrew from the alliance in 1959, this pact was transformed into the CENTO (Central Treaty Organization).

The Eastern Bloc

“People’s democracies”

In Eastern Europe they established…